Dear Tobacco Industry, This is the hardest letter I’ve ever had to write. Why is that, you ask? Well, because I don’t think words exist in English or any other language that would be sufficient to express my feelings of disgust and contempt for you. Even though the word “contempt” might make you picture an ugly sneer, or maybe even someone spitting on you, it’s still just a word. Isn’t it funny how the strongest emotions have to be expressed with the body and not through words? Working with the U.S. government Department of Defense, you’ve been killing my family for generations. You so generously supplied all the troops with cigarette rations until 1975, and they’re still sold in military commissaries today. Guess that was your token of appreciation for all their sacrifices in making the world safe for you to continue doing business. Studies show that more poor people smoke than rich people. Could that be because poor people often have to join the military to survive—and you created whole new generations of smokers that way? My first cigarette was a butt from my father’s ashtray, a few years after he returned from Viet Nam. His body, if not his soul, survived that war, but those Pall Malls finished the job of killing what was left of him. Being military brats, we grew up poor—and even poorer than necessary since so much money went to support his cigarette habit, literally taking food out of our mouths and clothes off our backs. I got my first sample pack of cigarettes on the streets of Los Angeles in 1974, at age 14. You’d hired people hand out free sample packs of Merit menthols to anyone who wanted them. I thought I wanted them, but actually, I had a sick, addicted need for them already, having grown up in a smoking household. Yes, it was my choice to become and remain a smoker for many years. However, I submit that your chemicals changed my brain chemistry, which affected my decision making abilities. The constant anxiety of poverty, when combined with the anxiety created by nicotine withdrawal, is simply too much for most people to bear without killing themselves quickly, rather than slowly, with your product. You know that you are dealing in death, yet, since our government is raking in part of the profits in taxes, you are allowed to go on killing people. But these are just words. If this were a just, rather than corrupt world, you would all be charged and convicted of crimes against humanity for continuing to enrich yourselves at the expense of the health and well-being of individuals and society as a whole. Not only do you kill people, but you use the profits to corrupt governments whose sole purpose for existing is supposed to be to protect the citizenry from greedy exploitive mass murderers such as yourselves. I am free of your addictive nicotine and your toxic chemicals at last. Free from contributing to my own destruction, to your profits, and to the maintenance of a corrupt government that cares not a whit for the health and well-being of those who make its existence possible. Free of the nicotine "products" the government uses to keep us addicted to nicotine until we return to buying cigarettes and filling their tax coffers. Free of vape juice , free of it all. Well, almost. I’m still not free of the murderous hatred I feel whenever I think of you. I imagine you flying in your private jets, sailing the open seas on your yachts, entertaining Congressmen in your homes in gated communities which provide ample protection for your solid gold plumbing fixtures ---and raising toasts to each other “To the labor of the poor slaves that make all this possible”. Then I fantasize about hacking your security system and going all Lizzie Borden on your asses. Spitting on you just wouldn’t be enough.